Bill “Moose” Skowron passed away on Friday.  Skowron was one of the first baseball players I was ever aware of, going back to when I was maybe four years old.  I don’t think I knew anything about him as a ballplayer, but the nickname was irresistible to a four-year-old. I probably thought he was an actual moose of some sort, though at the time that would, as far as I knew, have meant Bullwinkle or a stuffed animal.

One stat that offers a useful illustration of Skowron’s most prominent role in MLB history: Despite the fact that he played before there was any post-season play other than the World Series, Moose’s career total of 9 RBI in World Series Game Sevens remains the most career RBI that any player has ever accumulated in post-season sudden-death games.  Yogi Berra and Troy O’Leary  had eight RBI in sudden-death games  (O’Leary had seven ribbies for Boston in Game 5 of the 1999 ALDS against Cleveland, and one more for the Cubs in a losing cause — on a pinch-hit homer in the last plate appearance of his career — the  day after the Bartman game).  Mickey Mantle and Manny Ramirez each had seven RBI in sudden death games.  But no one other than Moose Skowron has had nine.

As Bill James pointed out in his New Historical  Abstract, Skowron might have been a somewhat bigger individual star had he played primarily with another team.  With the Yanks he wasn’t truly playing every day until relatively late, and Yankees Stadium hurt his home run totals — for his career he had 125 homers on the road and only 86 at home.  Moose (26.8 career bWAR) didn’t walk enough to be a great hitter, but with more playing time and a friendlier home park he might have been, say, Cecil Cooper (34.5 career bWAR), another first baseman who didn’t walk much.  In any event, despite his constraints and limitations, Skowron still had the most aggregate bWAR of any AL first baseman over the 11-season period from 1954 through 1964.  He certainly received his share of glory and will long be remembered as an important, talented, gregarious and popular part of the Mantle/Berra/Ford/Stengel Yankees dynasty.  And for a once-upon-a-time very young fan, as an introduction to the charm of baseball nicknames.